He'd been preparing for this. The Marconi Family's consigliere—that cold-eyed mouthpiece who'd buried a hundred sins beneath mountains of legal paperwork—was ready to crush me like I was nothing more than a rat scurrying too close to the Family's business.
Still, I went to the Marconi compound.
The elevator of their legitimate front—a towering monument of glass and steel that housed their import empire—carried me upward like a condemned woman ascending the gallows.
The doors slid open at the fifteenth floor, and there she stood.
Piper.
She was draped in custom Chanel, the fabric clinging to her like a second skin. Her handbag cost more than most soldiers earned in a year of wet work. And there, glittering on her wrist like a trophy ripped from a corpse—the princess bracelet.
My bracelet.
She looked like royalty. Like someone born into the inner circle, not a bastard daughter who'd clawed her way in through seduction and blood.
Her lips curled the moment our eyes met—a serpent's smile.
"Oh no, Anneliese..." she cooed, her voice dripping with poisoned honey. "You look awful. Guess it's true what they say—when a woman gets old, the bloom fades. No wonder Colino lost interest."
She tilted her head, feigning concern with the skill of a woman who'd learned to lie before she learned to walk.
"Still haven't buried your mother? Want me to help plan the funeral? I mean..." She pressed a manicured hand to her chest. "We are family, after all."
My hands curled into fists at my sides. Rage—white-hot and blinding—boiled up from somewhere deep in my chest until it threatened to burn me alive from the inside out.
"You knew it was a scam," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You knew. That was a con—a scheme that tricked my mother into giving up every cent she had saved. Every dollar she'd earned on her knees, scrubbing the Marconi floors."
Piper's expression shifted into wounded innocence, but the corner of her painted lips twitched with barely concealed amusement.
"How could you accuse me like that?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I was just trying to help. Your mother wanted to earn more for your wedding dowry. She came to me, Anneliese. What was I supposed to do—say no to that sweet old woman?"
My chest tightened like iron bands were being wrapped around my ribs. Blood rushed to my head, pounding in my ears like a war drum.